Damage Safety Assessment and Service Life Prediction of Bridges

Damage cumulation in existing bridges affects not only normal service of bridge but also service safety of structures. In order to ensure safety operation of existing bridges, it is necessary to keep informed of the situation of accumulative damage and the reliability of continuous service capacity of these bridges. In this paper, based on the characteristic of bridge structures, the damage mechanics are analyzed. The features of conventional methods of service safety assessment of bridges are dissected, and an effective method: dynamic decomposition combination method is introduced for service safety assessment of concrete beam bridges. By employing bridge condition changed-weight evaluated method, establishing the regression analysis model to predict the service life, the repairing or rebuilding life of bridges. According to the online safety assessment results and the damage characteristics of different types of bridges, the prediction results are timely suggested in order to help management department to ensure the service safety of bridges. The practice application of this method is introduced through the example of more than 3,000 bridges of one province.